9 Best Apps for Small Business Owners

Are you a small business owner? Then you quite often are pulled in several directions at the same time. You must be feeling very overwhelmed! I do! Not only are you in charge of production of whatever you are offering to your clients, but you must handle marketing, networking, website, social media platforms, payroll, employee issues, and anything else that may pop up! Simple cup of coffee won’t cut it! You’ve got to get a grip on it and have it done your way, but how? Sounds familiar? Of course, it does!

Now I do not have ny magic solutions but I’ve got the power of internet and grea love to research! Here is what I found!

There are thousands of productivity apps out there to help you to do everything from keep a neat to-do list to delegate tasks to employees, track the time you or them are spending on several projects, stay on top of your business expenses and don’t forget - to find some time to unwind your brain and have some fun.

Here is a list of a few an excellent apps for small business general productivity

Evernote

With Evernote, you can clip bits and pieces of information from the web, tag them for easy searching, and alter any of them by adding to it, condensing it, or embedding pictures, tables, audio, video, and the like. You can also use Evernote for organic notes and journaling, to-do lists, recipes, contacts, and even storage for tweets or emails that you want to keep handy.

All of that is free in the basic version. Evernote also has a business version that costs $12 per user, per month with several added features including administrator controls and unlimited space for uploads.

Wunderlist

Simply put, Wunderlist is a to-do list, but a highly effective one. You can create an endless number of task lists and share them with whomever you want. Lists sync automatically so that others can see which items have been completed.

Wunderlist has even launched a higher-powered business app that lets you delegate tasks to team members, break them down into subtasks, add notes, set deadlines, and program reminders. Basic Wunderlist is free, while Wunderlist for Business is $4.99 per user per month.

Pocket

How many times have you run across something interesting, but you didn’t have the time to read it right away? If Evernote feels overwhelming to you, Pocket makes it easy to save videos, articles, and whatever else you find online so that you can peruse them later.

When you’re tired of social networking but still want to wind down at night with something interesting, Pocket might be your best friend. Even better, you don’t need an Internet connection to view what you’ve saved. Pocket is simple to use, and best of all, it’s free.

Best Small Business Apps for Time Tracking

Whether you’re a freelancer who needs to track your hours or simply a small business owner who wants to keep yourself (or your team) more accountable, these productivity apps can help you see where your time is going:

Toggl

With one click, the Toggl timer tracks where every second of your time is going, making it ideal for anyone who needs to log billable hours. You can track as many projects or clients as you want, view colorful graphs, export timesheets, and sync your numbers with several project management apps.

Best of all, all of your employees can use Toggl, and you can divide them into different groups to stay organized.

Toggl is free for up to five users, while a Pro version allows unlimited users and adds billable rates, subprojects, and other features for $5 per user, per month.

RescueTime

If you know you waste too much time on digital distractions like Facebook, Twitter, or online shopping, RescueTime can hold you accountable. It breaks down where you spend your time by application and website and lets you set productivity goals. A premium version even lets you block certain sites, track offline activity, or set notifications (like if you’ve spent too much time on one activity, for instance).

The basic version is free, while premium will set you back about $9 a month. Though RescueTime is available for Mac, PC, and Linux, its app is only available for Android phones.

Eternity Time Log

Productivity extends beyond your work life, and Eternity Time Log recognizes that. Your day is first broken down into three broad chunks: Work, play, and sleep. Within those groups, you can further track your time with different labels and tags, even running multiple timers at once.

You can view the results using colorful pie charts and reports that can be exported to any device. Eternity Time Log will set you back $4.99. It’s only available for iPad and iPhone.

Best Small Business Apps for Accounting

You’ve gotten paid, but you’ve also got expenses — lots of them. You need a way to keep track of cash that’s going in and going out, especially once it’s tax time. Here are a few great accounting apps that will let you stay on top of your numbers:

QuickBooks Online

If your small business is like a lot of others, you already use QuickBooks, or your accountant does. QuickBooks Online has a lot going for it, including a familiar, easy-to-navigate interface and integration with many other services. You can send invoices on the go, view balances, approve estimates, and link to many other services including PayPal.

The base version of QuickBooks Online is $9.99 per month. It includes invoicing, check printing, and bank integration. More expensive versions are $19.99 to $29.99 a month and include advanced features like bill payment scheduling, purchase order management, and inventory tracking.

FreshBooks

If you have a service-oriented business that doesn’t need a high-powered accounting solution, FreshBooks is an easy-to-use option that offers a lot of functionality on the go. Track hours, log receipts, and send invoices from your smartphone or tablet.

Tools are highly visual and intuitive, and the service integrates with several others including Basecamp, PayPal, Google Apps, and ZenPayroll. Note that FreshBooks does not offer double-entry bookkeeping.

The base plan starts at $19.95 a month, and allows management of up to 25 clients. More fully featured versions allow unlimited clients for up to $39.95 a month.

Wave

Say you’re on a tight budget and you really, really don’t want to pay for accounting software. There’s an app for that, and it’s called Wave.

As long as you have fewer than 10 employees, Wave is an easy-to-use platform that can take care of your invoicing, expense tracking, receipt scanning, and more. You can add links to your bank accounts and integrate with PayPal and other services, too.

The free version is ad-supported, so keep that in mind. You’ll also have to pay for certain added features such as payroll or premium customer support — both start at $19 per month.

Which small business apps are best? That will largely depend on your business and your own preferences. If you don’t have the time to wade through an endless list of apps, I’ve picked several tried-and-true choices to get you started and show yous some preferences and advantages. Have a personal favorite to recommend? Let me know in the comments